The Death of the Remote and the Rise of the Connected Me

Nearly every other month for the past 7 years, we hear another story about the death of television. However, user consumption patterns and behaviors tell a slightly different story. Although it is easy to argue that “traditional live-linear television” is not the same as it was a decade ago, it’s also easy to argue that people’s daily habits, behaviors and everyday lives have changed our definition and expectations of television.

The reality is that the industry is continuing to grow with increases in premium content creation and consumption. Equally, there is a dramatic shift of quality short form content programming emerging as part of new services and channels.

So what does it mean when we use the phrase “The Death of the Remote?”

What it means for Experience Designers is that our traditional concept of the remote will continue to evolve through Mobile, Voice UI and Connected Ecosystems (devices, homes, cars and cities). We are constantly presented with new and disruptive opportunities to reshape the way people communicate and interact through design and shared experiences.

Our emotional connection to the remote is largely because it provides us with a tactile feeling of control in the palm of our hand.

What began as a channel selector with volume control has evolved into whole home automation with voice controls, conversations, and communications through virtual assistants, artificial intelligence, and deep machine learning.

Voice UI, AI, and Zero UI are three key areas that will change our perception of the remote and dynamically shift how we design for future generations and intelligent connected technologies.

Everything Evolves

In 1898, Nikola Tesla was the first person to receive a patent on the design of a remote control. Interestingly enough, Nikola Tesla also filed the first Drone Patent in 1898, but we will save that for another post.

The first television remote control was called “Lazybones” and dates back to 1950, while the first wireless television remote was called “Flashmatic” and released in 1955, both by the Zenith Radio Corporation.

Over the past 65 years, the TV remote has continued to evolve, but remained mostly unchanged. Its primary purpose allows a person to change channels and applications, search and switch content preferences, adjust volume, set reminders or watch live events across any platform.

When you compare exponential advancements of past 6 years to the previous 60 years, it is hard not to recognize the extraordinary leaps in innovation and consumer expectations.

For the first 6 decades, the remote symbolized our unique control over our living room media habits, channel choices, and content. Whoever wielded the remote possessed the power to tune in or turn off with the click of a button.

Then there was Apple. In 2007, Apple released it’s first generation iPhone. This not only fundamentally changed the smartphone, but also began to reshape our concept of the remote by introducing the power of millions of mobile apps in the palm of our hand.

At its core, the remote gives us the ability to control something from a distance. It allows us to change, affect, or interact with someone or something.

With the rapid advancements of the past decade, the remote ultimately allows us to connect with people, places, things and television anywhere and anytime. All of this is now available in the palm of your hand, quickly becoming standard for Centennials to Boomers.

The future of the remote and our definition of the remote, will continue to change as we mature with Voice UI and Conversational UX, Artificial Intelligence and Assistants, Zero UI and Geo-Contextual Services.

Designing for Ecosystems
So before we go any farther, you might be asking…how do you design for a world with no interfaces and only conversations? Big challenges require big changes in our thinking to design solutions for our shared future.

Experience Design (XD) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, journeys, interactions and environments where the quality of the user experience is culturally relevant, contextual, meaningful, and tangible to the individual or shared group.

Designers are driven to evolve the meaning of their roles in a world where technology, products and businesses must exceed a person’s expectations and needs.

In today’s world, new products and trends are constantly shifting current consumer landscapes. This puts increased pressure on Experience Designers to view the world as both connected and shared ecosystems through new and innovative ways that are seamless and natural to the way we live our everyday lives.

These future predictions are not new; however, their adoption by mainstream consumers is what is driving the current pace of disruption. Every Experience Designer will need to understand and accommodate for several emerging technologies if they want to remain relevant in tomorrow’s connected and automated world.

Voice UI & Conversational UX

Voice UI and Conversational UX are two critical areas where Experience Designers must find ways to rapidly evolve with the technology. 2017 is seeing a massive increase in voice assistants like Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod devices. We are quickly moving from singular prompts that ask about the weather and set timers into conversational language, multi-step commands and time/location specific feedback.

Voice UI is becoming smarter by the day — sensing voice inflections, mood and tone, while providing relevant context and information directly into the discussion. As the technologies behind Voice UI continue to mature, designers will be challenged to create natural language interactions that are as organic as everyday conversation.

Conversational UX is the design of the style, personality, tone, voice and empathy of the brand. When speaking, it must exude a sense of humanity with variations in character and mood through natural responses.

These advancements within the Experience Design practice create new opportunities for search, navigation and physical control through both voice and conversation — ultimately reshaping our definition of the remote.

Benefits & Challenges

• Designing for Voice UI requires a deep understanding of inference, context and environment.
• Personality and tone will be critical for brands who want to compete when interfaces become limited.
• Success will ultimately be measured by the ability for humans and technology to communicate naturally.

Artificial Intelligence & Assistants

Advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning are maturing rapidly — finding consumer applications within science, education, media and original content. Because of its exponential growth, there is a strong belief within the Design Industry that Voice UI and Artificial Intelligence will become primary discovery interfaces for product, service and content companies by 2022.

As part of product design and product vision strategies, we must look towards truly personalized experiences that are tailored, curated and contextual.

Products and services must align with user behaviors, patterns and habits to create seamless user experiences. As designers, it is just as important to design for “one-to-many” conversations, as it is to design for “one-to-one” conversations when considering AI, Voice UI and Assistants.

Designing with Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Assistants should continue to focus on a human first approach, using personalization that is contextual for emerging and shared ecosystems. This approach ensures that a user’s history, patterns and past behaviors will influence and integrate seamlessly with their daily experiences.

“Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing.” — Larry Page

Benefits & Challenges

• Designers must create experiences that include individual, connected and shared ecosystems.
• Designing for both invisible and tangible experiences requires a core understanding of natural and cultural language.
• AI creates substantial challenges for Designers to create new methods of contextual location based systems that are relevant and personalized.

Zero UI

Zero UI removes the barriers between the user and the device. This creates more seamless interactions with the technology, products and content — providing more control using voice, gesture, haptic and spatial interactions.

With the emergence of Voice UI, AI, AR & MR, we are moving towards more intuitive technology that connects people directly and seamlessly with their environment.

Zero UI removes the need for touch screens, buttons, and manual inputs. This presents exciting new challenges for Experience Designers developing interactions that are fully integrated with the user’s direct and indirect surroundings.

Google ATAP and Project Soli is one of the most mature examples of Zero UI in practice. Users are able to simulate physical controls and micro-gestures to connect and control everything from buttons to volume knobs. Combined with Voice UI and AI, Zero UI shifts our concept of the remote control.

“Good design, when done well, becomes invisible. It’s only when its done poorly that we notice it.” — Jared Spool

Benefits & Challenges

• Zero UI includes new interfaces that utilize a full range of data, audible, gaze and gestural interactions in and on demand environment.
• Understanding location, spatial, contextual and conversational experiences are essential for success.
• Designers must focus on natural human behaviors to create non-touch environments and experiences.

Anticipatory Design

Anticipatory Design is quickly becoming the next great leap in Experience Design. It involves the design of transparent and transient patterns through predictive UX and ambient technologies.

Reducing decision fatigue while anticipating deeper interactions with the surrounding environment creates new challenges for designers who are designing for a multi-modal ecosystem with IoT, Voice UI and AI. Combining personalized data with user interactions can sometimes feel like a forced extension of the technology.

When designed successfully, Anticipatory Design moves the experience from curator to communicator.

Experience Designers will need to re-think their approach to through shared journeys, behaviors, locations and proximity, historical data and security. Anticipatory Design challenges Experience Designers to understand ethics, cultural behaviors, and history to create future opportunities and patterns.

“A great experience not only provides context and relevancy, but also anticipates a user’s needs based on deep knowledge, empathy and understanding.”

Benefits & Challenges

• Anticipatory Design is the next great leap for Experience Designers.
• Anticipating a user’s needs through predictive models requires designers to re-think their solutions to provide context, relevancy and value.
• Designers will be challenged to create solutions that include deeper knowledge of security, ethics and cultural information.

The Connected Me

The Connected Me is a term we use to define the future of human experiences — living at the intersection of technology, product and business ecosystems. These ecosystems will be personal, local and global simultaneously. They will force designers to expand their approach to seamlessly integrate culture, economics, psychology, behavioral patterns and ethics within an organic living connected system.

When most people think of Smart homes, they tend to think of cute little robots or assistants that record their tasks, launch their Spotify Playlist and/or turns the light over the sink off when they’re in bed. However, Experience Designers must think beyond the smart home.

We must understand and solve for the intelligent world where users are connected 24/7 to the people and things they care about most.

As smartphones continue to become powerful hand-held super computers that connect us to an on-demand world — it delivers connectivity to your work, home, friends, fitness, calendars, car, banking and everything throughout your everyday life.

Imagine an evening dinner with a group of friends talking about the next hot content series. Before you’ve even picked up your car, the virtual assistant has asked if you want to set the series to start when you’re home.

With a simple turn of your wrist, your watch simultaneously confirms with your car, home and calendar to route and schedule the rest of the evening.

As you pull into the driveway, your house lights up, anticipating your entry to provide you enough time to get ready, grab a snack and relax. These new challenges that face Experience Designers drives us to understand how we communicate in a future where everything, and everyone, is connected. Users will have access to an on-demand world through multiple methods, devices and frictionless systems.

“The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” — William Gibson